


If You Wear A Red Hood

by Hedgebelle (Ahaanzel)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010), Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Batfam Halloween, Canonical Character Death, Car Accidents, Drug Addiction, Gen, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Jason Todd is Robin, Magical Realism, Mentions of the following:, Rumors, Spooky, Superstition, Unreliable Narrator, Urban Legends, no beta we die like men, racial and ethnic prejudice, rated m to be safe, this fic is dark folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:53:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27173396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ahaanzel/pseuds/Hedgebelle
Summary: If you wear a red hood, he heard whispered in the alleyways,none of your heists should fail you, no bullet would graze you and crowds shall adore you. For a time.Through the years, Jason learns there is nothing more dangerous than an idea given a life of its own and some mantles were never meant to be taken on.Meanwhile, a red hood awaits.Batfam Halloween Week, prompt: urban legends.Inspired by Gotham (TV) S01E17 “Red Hood”.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 57
Collections: Batfam Halloween Week





	If You Wear A Red Hood

**Author's Note:**

> **A fair warning:** English is not my native language and this fic turned out darker than I expected.

By the time little Jason Todd first heard about him, Red Hood had been more of an idea than an actual person. So many had put on the garment already, only the GCPD records cared to keep track of their names. For everyone else, they mattered not. The city didn’t look past the colour they bore – the same colour that caught Jason’s eye sometimes on the TV screen in the dingy flat he lived in with his mum, or on a front page of Gotham Gazette lying about on a street.

 _If you wear a red hood_ , he heard whispered in the alleyways, _none of your heists should fail you, no bullet would graze you and crowds shall adore you_. 

_For a time_ , the Crime Alley folks were quick to add for they were a superstitious lot and have noticed a pattern. A man would wear a hood and the Hood would suffer bearing worn graciously, lending him its glory. But the man would get greedy. There would always be one more heist, that one last job, and the Hood would grow impatient. Once that feeling thickened into resentment, good luck would run out. A stray bullet or freak accident, or discontent stewed among teammates, yet another gang of yet another Red Hood; one way or another, the man would end up dead.

_And the Hood would wait for another to cover their face with its colour._

Little Jason wondered. Why would anyone want to be a Red Hood doing a heist? Why not a Batman, fighting crime where police couldn’t or wouldn’t? Why not a Robin, flying through the night like the epitome of happiness and freedom? He often dwelled on those thoughts as he hurried down the Alley, head bowed not to see or hear, or as he tiptoed around the flat when his mum was there but not with him. Nothing about the Hood’s promise seemed tempting to him, so why had there been so many red hoods but only one Robin?

* * *

Jason was not so little anymore when he saw one of the red hoods meet his untimely end. 

There was a commotion on his way to school. Red and blue lights flashed; officers shouted into their radios; paramedics fluttered around the wreckage; curious onlookers craned their necks to better feast their eyes on the tragedy. A most recent Red Hood outran the police cars, they said, but not a massive truck that smashed into his motorcycle from the side. 

( _What are the odds_ , whispered the passers-by, exchanging knowing looks.) 

Somehow, sometime, in the confusion of the scene, the red cloth was torn from a dead man’s face to eventually fall at Jason’s feet. Its bright colour caught his eye like it always had, and the oddest thought crossed his mind. 

_The Hood wanted Jason to pick him up._

He scowled. Maybe if the Hood was _happiness_ and _freedom_ , he could have been tempted. But it wasn’t and Jason had no use of it. He didn’t need the extraordinary luck it brought – a regular one would do just fine – and neither did he want to do any heists, content to live peacefully with his mum. 

A red hood was left lying on the ground.

(Unbeknownst to him, later in the day Catherine Todd felt blindly for a syringe. Had she not found it… But _bad luck_ , she did. When Jason came back from school, she was already cold.)

* * *

He was twelve years old when he learned that some dreams do come true.

He had been fending off for himself on the streets for some time already when one night he spotted a nice set of fancy tires. Fast forward half a year and he was donning the iconic cape to fly ( _fly!_ ) and bring swift justice where he had previously been too scared to look or to listen. 

They, Batman and his new Robin had stopped Scarecrow from carrying out his devious plot the first time they went on patrol together, and Jason felt on top of the world. 

That was when he felt a tug at the hem of his cape. “Is this something you should be wearing, boy?”

“What?” Jason turned around, scowling. He expected to see a middle-class, law-abiding taxpayer, concerned to see an adolescent out on a school night ~~but not begging for scraps in a ditch~~. But no, it was one of Alley's lost souls – a woman he often saw passed out with a bottle behind dumpsters or arguing with the voices in her head. Behind the domino mask, his scowl deepened. 

“This,” the woman gave his black and yellow cape another tug, “Is this something you should be wearing?”

There was no use talking with a drunkard, he knew. After living out in the streets, oh, how well did he know. “What do you mean?” He asked anyway.

The woman gave him a nasty grin, exposing a set of rotting teeth. “This is more than just clothes a Batman sidekick wears.” She tugged at his cape yet again and it was getting on his nerves. “This has become an idea, and mark my words, boy. Them ideas have a mind of their own.” She looked him up and down, eyes shrewd. “If I were you, I would have checked.”

“Checked what?” He asked despite himself, fed up as he was with this conversation.

“If the first boy hasn’t cursed it.”

The woman burst into drunken laughter as he angrily tore his cape from her hand. 

“Robin!” Batman called him over from where he was talking with Commissioner Gordon.

Jason gladly went, ostensibly not looking behind. The tips of his ears were red at the mean chortles that had yet to die down. 

Later that night, he was sitting in Batmobile and Batmobile was zipping through the familiar streets of Gotham. He looked outside the window, not really seeing, as his mind wandered. Words of that drunkard were still ringing in his ears and – ashamed as he was of himself for that – for one moment he thought about the travelling circus with its snake charmers and fortune-tellers; about the golden hue of Dick Grayson’s skin, a shade darker than his own. And for a fraction of a second he would hate himself for afterwards, he couldn’t help but wonder.

_Could he have?_

* * *

By the time he turned fifteen, Jason had realised that while some dreams do come true, it would perhaps be for the best, if they had not.

It wasn’t the anger he carried like a festering wound in heart, nor the fact that Bruce, the almighty Batman in his ivory tower, never seemed to understand crime. Something else took the crown as the thing that bothered him the most – his Robin suit. He knew for sure it was new, tailor-made and upgraded, and yet it still felt like a hand-me-down that just would not fit. 

(He had a terrible suspicion why that might be, but he would never dare to utter it out loud.)

Months after months have passed since the night he had first put on the black and yellow cape. He did jumps and flips and swung his grapnel on his way through Gotham just as proficiently as Batman himself did. But at the end of the day, Jason had always been the one to keep his feet on the ground, not fly carelessly in the sky. But _Robin_ was the epitome of happiness and freedom which every single Gotham low-life at just one glance could tell Jason was not.

He didn't expect this dichotomy to feel quite as horrible.

Over time, his anger started to taste like resentment. _This_ wasn't Dick Grayson's thing anymore, not after his fight with Bruce, not since he had been stripped of the title. Besides, Jason could be a Robin too! And he could be a better one at that, one that cracked bones rather than jokes. 

As if rising to his challenge, the cape grew heavier and heavier. Jason refused to put it down, though, so wearing Robin's cape, he went into that good night.

Wearing that cape, he died.

* * *

Back in Gotham, yet another young boy took to the skies with Batman.

 _If you wear a black and yellow cape_ , every shadow in the city was abuzz with whispers, _be very afraid because Robin is less gracious than the Hood is, and does not suffer impostors_.

But it mattered not. At twenty years old, Jason no longer wished to chase after _happiness_ and _freedom_. His death has cured him of that.

Now, he was getting ready to take the stage and dazzle Gotham with his performance in the first act of his revenge. He had his duffle bag, he had his AK47 and only one last finishing touch to do. 

He picked up his custom-made helmet. He had it painted red. 

“So, Hood. What’s it gonna be?” He looked at it with a wry smirk. “The word is you like heists and I could use all the luck I can get with this one. But if you think you can off me,” his smirk widened into a grin that was all teeth, “don’t bother. It would be so Joker five years ago.”

He covered his face with the colour and it felt right. 

_Sorry not sorry, Hood_ , he thought, as something that felt like hysterics but disguised itself as laughter bubbled in his chest. _From now on, you're no longer an idea._ _There had been many who called themselves red hoods, but I will be the last one._

The Hood had no complaints.

**Author's Note:**

> Please, feel free to interpret it however you like.  
>   
> You can find me [here](https://hedgebelle.tumblr.com/).  
> Not much in there, but feel free to say hi :D.


End file.
